German Studies
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Martin Blumenthal-Barby

Assistant Professor

Blumenthal-Barby 

Email: mb14@rice.edu Phone: x4562 Office: 334 Rayzor Hall

Education

  • PhD, Yale University, 2008
  • MPhil, Yale University, 2006

Areas of Interest

  • literary theory, film theory, aesthetics, and philosophy
  • German literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth century
  • German film

Personal Statement

Martin Blumenthal-Barby joined Rice's German Studies department in 2009 as Assistant Professor. He studied German Literature, Philosophy, and Theory of Drama at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, at Cornell University, and at Yale University.

Professor Blumenthal-Barby is currently revising his dissertation—Acts of Political Theory: Müller, Kafka, New German Film, Benjamin, Arendt—for publication, and he is already busy with two new major research projects: The first project is concerned with film theory, while the second project investigates the relationship between secularization and religion in the European literary and filmic traditions, focusing, among others, on Carl Schmitt, Hans Blumenberg, Jacob Taubes, and Weimar cinema.

In the short time since his arrival at Rice, he has already introduced a new set of film studies courses, and he has also started what is to become the department's official film series, Kino Dienstag, which will present a German film every other Tuesday to the Rice community.

His research and teaching interests include German literature and philosophy from the eighteenth century to the present with a particular emphasis on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and aesthetics as well as German film and literary theory.

Selected Publications

  • “Pernicious Bastardizations: Benjamin’s Ethics of Pure Violence,” forthcoming in Modern Language Notes 124 (2009).
  • “‘The Odium of Doubtfulness,’ or the Vicissitudes of Metaphoric Thinking,” New German Critique 36/1 (Winter 2009), 61-81.
  • “‘Germany in Autumn’: The Return of the Human,” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 29/1 (2007), 140-68.
  • “Why Does Hannah Arendt Lie? Or, the Vicissitudes of Imagination,” The Germanic Review 82 (2007), 369-88.